Grant: Alliance Grants

Demand for sustainable animal production is led by citizen concerns regarding animal welfare and environmental sustainability, while economic pressure on farmers increases due to changes in markets increasing input prices with little to no changes in output sale prices. Scientific evidence shows how animal welfare and cow longevity go hand in hand, driving the industry's interest in cow welfare, as improving longevity is considered an answer to issues of economic, social, and environmental sustainability in dairy farming. Our initiative is based on the use of remote sensing and artificial intelligence (AI), which could enhance our ability to detect changes in welfare and longevity before the onset of visible outcomes and to generate predictions to aid in on-farm decision-making, ensuring that efforts are focused on animals most likely to succeed in the long-term. Thus, our research initiative aims to capture the impact of modifications to housing systems, management practices and animal handling on the welfare and the longevity of dairy cows. The initiative will be constituted as a Digital Living Lab centered on animals' and end users' needs. Data sources will include (i) two research farms (for results that are reproducible and credible to farm systems); (ii) an expanding network of commercial farms (for objectives that require a longitudinal analysis); and (iii) feedback from end users (to support feasibility of recommendations). An ecosystem empowered with remote sensing and AI will be applied to predict indicators of welfare, longevity, and profitability thorough the animal's life. Data from cameras and sensors will be integrated with AI to capture meaningful insights and automate machine-learning predictors. Our project will allow to assess how modifications to the cow's physical environment impact welfare and longevity outcomes, and how the digital environment enhances end users' ability to improve the cow's physical and psychological experience, while giving new keys to the dairy industry for ensuring its sustainability.